Jail isn't problem, system is

For years, it has been gospel: San Joaquin County needs a new jail. This week, county supervisors voted it down. Though there's $80 million in state money earmarked to build it.

Michael Fitzgerald

For years, it has been gospel: San Joaquin County needs a new jail. This week, county supervisors voted it down. Though there's $80 million in state money earmarked to build it.

They were right to do so.

Since the recession dried up government revenues and California dumped - excuse me, realigned - state prisoners to counties, local criminal justice officials have racked their brains to find new and smarter ways to operate.

Though the Old School is still advocating the lock-'em-up model, there's a fundamental shift toward keeping people out of jail to free up cells for the worst criminals.

"It sounds like it's the only game we've got," Sheriff Steve Moore said. "I don't have a jail to put them in, so I've got to go with the new approaches."

This change bears on the competing crime plans before the city of Stockton. One reflects the new direction. One is marching backward.

I confess to being a former member of the New Jail Club, which I joined in 2005. Back then, analysis revealed that the county criminal justice system was dysfunctional in every branch.

But that's the point. The problem is systemic. Fixing only the jail is too crude an approach to work. You can give a patient with five organ failures one new organ, and then you can call the morgue.

The solution has to be systemic, and smart. A new jail at this time is neither. Reason one is money. A new jail would cost $115.5 million to build and $69.6 million a year to run.

While $80 million (in state money) is in the bank, the rest of the construction costs are not. Neither is the $70 million in annual operating costs.

County voters would have to approve a tax ... on top of a tax-for-cops (and debt) Marshall Plan in the works in Stockton. That's astronomically unlikely.

Absent new revenue, the county, faced with $228 million in net revenue losses ($454 million over 10 years) would have to cut everything else by 27 percent to fund the jail.

Yet a 2008 study said the new jail, while increasing capacity, would extend the average jail stay from 17.4 to only 24.1 days. Not much bang for the buck.

Plus, 63.7 percent of prisoners who get out of the slammer commit more crimes. I'll stop with the numbers and just make it this: Jail alone is not working.

As gratifying as it is to imagine a jail door clang behind a criminal, jail does not realistically deal with underlying crime-causing issues such as mental illness or substance abuse.

Which leads us to the second reason to hold off on a jail. The system is not making the best use of its resources. Or being smart enough about who to jail.

So concluded the Community Corrections Partnership, or CCP, the local criminal justice system's top dogs: the district attorney, sheriff, the public defender, a police chief, courts manager and others.

They say the criminal justice system could perform better and save money if changes are made in three areas:

» Pre-trial assessments. Not everybody arrested needs to be jailed until trial. Improved screening can free up jail beds by releasing low-risk prisoners on their own recognizance.

» A community corrections facility. Leaders journeyed to Oregon to study a dorm-like facility for low-level offenders that is much cheaper to build and operate than a jail.

» Supervision. A range of sentencing, from "split sentences" of part incarceration and part alternative sentencing to ankle bracelets and GPS monitors can free up more jail beds.

One additional fact: the old jail isn't even paid off yet.

The CCP's recommendations are too detailed to recount here. But they boil down to the belief that the county can forgo a new jail if the various parts of the criminal justice system are integrated into a higher-functioning whole that is smarter about its resources.

Of course, there's a risk. But since there's no money anyway, it's the best shot.

Which brings us to Stockton's two competing crime plans.

The Marshall Plan has been slow to roll out precisely because the very same CCP top dogs have been working on it, too, as part of retooling the county public safety machine.

Mayor Anthony Silva's Safe Streets plan is a non sequitur to this process. Another partial fix, it reverts to the old jail-'em model that the county can no longer afford. Even new jail supporters see the need for a new approach.

"We're going to do everything we can to make these things work," Sheriff Moore said. "I would be happy if all those alternatives work."